Japan to lose Sakhalin-2 rights if Kishida supports oil price cap, Medvedev warns

Former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that Japan will be kicked out of the Sakhalin-2 oil and natural gas development project in the Russian Far East if a cap on the price of Russian oil is introduced as has been proposed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

In a comment posted online, Medvedev also said Japan will become unable to source oil and gas from Russia, Japan Times reports.

His remarks came after Kishida revealed a plan during a stump speech in Tokyo on Sunday to set an upper limit on the international community’s purchase prices for Russian oil, at around half of its current level, in line with discussions with his Group of Seven counterparts.

Medvedev said such a measure would lead to significant declines in the amount of oil available in the market and would sharply push up the price.

The same day, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev, one of the closest aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Japan was strengthening its revanchist stance over four northwestern Pacific islands at the center of a long-standing territorial dispute between the two nations.

He made the remarks at a meeting in the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, according to Russia’s state-owned ITAR-Tass news agency.

Patrushev was quoted as saying the United States and its allies are “increasing their military presence in the Arctic and Asia-Pacific regions and activating Japan’s revanchist aspirations with regards to the Kuril Islands by means of creating new military blocs.”

The four Russian-controlled islands, located off the eastern coast of the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido, are called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia.

Russia has harshly reacted to Japan’s sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, which were imposed jointly with the U.S. and major European countries.

In March, Russia declared a halt to its talks with Japan to resolve the territorial dispute and conclude a World War II peace treaty.

On Thursday, Putin signed a presidential decree to transfer rights to the Sakhalin-2 project to a new Russian company, making it uncertain whether participating Japanese firms will be able to keep their stakes in the project.